It was late when Elsie cycled home from Maggie’s wedding on her Raleigh, her head full of songs and dancing. Maggie had looked beautiful in her ‘going away’ outfit, accessorised with a silver fox fur, thoughtfully gifted by the groom, Elsie thought, as she opened the front door. George was such a handsome groom too, in his made-to-measure suit – single-breasted, of course, since double-breasted jackets and turn-ups on trousers had been prohibited by the Board of Trade.

‘What a day!’ she said to her mother, Violet, as she placed the posy of flowers she’d caught on the kitchen table, where Violet was sewing an elbow patch onto her overall. She sat down on a creaky chair, which rocked slightly on uneven legs, and sighed happily. In the background, the wireless droned on with the Home Service news reporting on the German invasion of the Soviet Union – but Elsie didn’t want to listen. Instead, her mind was brimming with thoughts of her own wedding to William. They didn’t want anything big, couldn’t afford anything grand – they just wanted to be together and put the uncertainty of the last eighteen months behind them and face the future hand in hand.

‘Maggie looked beautiful tonight,’ she told Violet. ‘It’s made me so excited about my wedding. I can’t wait to be married to William, Mother. Some certainty in these uncertain times would be good, wouldn’t it?’

Violet glanced up at Elsie from her sewing with her big brown eyes – full of concern and love – before putting down the fabric and needle for a moment, and drinking the cool remains of her earlier cup of weak tea.

‘Those poor people in Smolensk,’ she said, not picking up Elsie’s thread of conversation. ‘Hitler will stop at anything. I sometimes wonder what his mother thinks of him. Apparently, she was an unmarried kitchen hand, would you believe?’

Elsie raised her eyebrows. She’d never really thought about Hitler as a person before, someone who had parents and maybe brothers and sisters. He was a crazy monster and a dark force who seemed to stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Murmuring her response, she stood and moved over to the wireless and switched it off, even though her mother objected with a tut.

‘I need a break from the war,’ she explained. ‘Just for tonight. It’s all I hear on the buses, it’s all people want to talk about.’

Flickering her eyes around the small kitchen, Elsie’s high spirits suddenly dipped. Though Violet did her best with Elsie’s help to keep on top of things, the house needed attention. In her father, Alberto’s, absence, Elsie made a mental list of all the jobs that needed doing: she needed to get pot-menders from the ironmongers to repair the hole in the kettle; all the chair seats needed re-webbing; the enamel milk jug needed fixing with sealing wax; the cupboard handles needed tightening up and even the rug on the floor needed patching up. On top of her job as one of Bournemouth’s ‘clippies’, plus her fire-watching duties and helping take care of her sisters, there weren’t enough hours in the day.

‘I think I should wear the dress I was meant to wear last year, do you?’ Elsie continued, returning to her seat, but her mother didn’t respond. ‘I’ve heard there’s some parachute nylon available and girls are making their own dresses, but I will wear the one—’

‘He must have been born under a blood moon,’ Violet interrupted, before reciting a line from the Bible: ‘Before them the earth shakes, the sky trembles, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.’

Elsie shook her head and rested her head in her hands for a moment, before pulling in her chair, closer to the table and putting her palms down flat. ‘Mother,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you want me to marry William or something?’

Violet looked pained and picked up her sewing again, accidentally jabbing her finger with the needle. ‘Ouch!’ she cried, before sucking the dot of scarlet blood from her finger. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to marry him,’ she continued, ‘it’s just he’s messed you about something rotten. Last year he didn’t come to his own wedding, this year he broke off your engagement and now it’s on again. In my mind, love is straightforward, and he’s made it more complicated than it should be. Can you be sure you can trust him? I do so wish your father was here.’

Elsie knew her mother was just wanting to protect her from further heartbreak, but she felt herself bristle. Was it that she was voicing concerns in the deepest, darkest depths of her own mind? No, she told herself firmly, that wasn’t it at all. William had been through a difficult time – more difficult than she could possibly imagine – and he was doing his utmost, now, to find his equilibrium.

‘Did I tell you that the clippies’ uniform is changing?’ said Elsie, deliberately ignoring Violet’s question. ‘Girls have been wearing whatever they want under the ticket punching machine, the cash bag and the cap, but that’s going to change. The uniform is now going to include slacks.’

Her mother stared up at her, with a small, knowing smile on her face. ‘Just you take care,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Take good care of your heart. You can be pig-headed at times, Elsie.’

‘Slacks are much more convenient for running up and down the stairs,’ said Elsie. ‘More than eighty-five per cent of clippies voted for slacks over skirts.’ She looked affectionately over the table at her mother, giggling into her hand.

‘You…’ said Violet, shaking her head and joining her daughter in laughter.

---

William returned to the bakery after the wedding reception to work in the bakehouse alongside John. Rhythmically preparing trays of tinned dough to prove, he felt his mind slip into the familiar black hole that was his all-too recent memories of the battle in France. It seemed whenever he let his mind run free, it returned to the same place, to the same suffering and bewilderment that nothing could have ever prepared him for.

‘I love her, you know, John,’ he said suddenly, not pausing from his work. ‘I mean, I love Elsie.’

The bakehouse was warm from the heat of the raging ovens, dimly lit and hazy with flour. The bread peels, like boat oars, leaned up against the brick walls, and a broom for sweeping up the flour stood alongside. It was a hot night, anyway, and William worked in a vest, with a white apron over the top, while John wore a pristine long-sleeved shirt, apron and cap. Clipped to his apron were his spectacles, which he occasionally lifted to his eyes, to check the dough.

‘I know that,’ said John, who was now turning his attention to sweeping the flour from the floor with the broom. ‘That’s clear for anyone to see.’

Without facing John, William continued to work and talk – he had to tell someone what was burdening him. ‘I think I need to tell her about what happened when I was away. What I did in France, it has changed me—’ he started, but John slammed the broom down.

‘I’ve told you about this, son,’ he said, pulling at William’s shoulder so he was forced to face him. ‘You can keep going back, living in fear of what you’ve done, turning it over and over in your mind, or you can bury it. Lock it away and throw away the key. We all do bad things – we all have regrets – but we’re ’uman. Let yourself off the hook, young man, let yourself off the hook! You’re a good man with a good heart. You have a beautiful fiancée. Don’t trouble her with what’s behind you and what you cannot change. Get on with your life, William – it’s no good fighting for freedom if you come back a prisoner.’

William nodded and, sighing deeply, he chewed on his bottom lip, throwing all his frustrated strength into his work, until his back ached and his right leg throbbed. He repeated John’s words to himself: It’s no good fighting for freedom if you come back a prisoner.

---

Audrey frowned as she stood outside the bakehouse door, a pile of freshly laundered and pressed dishcloths in her hand. It was very late now, and she was tired after the wedding knees-up, but she’d heard William and John’s conversation and felt suddenly wide awake. What was William talking about? What terrible thing had he done in France – and what did it have to do with Elsie? Just when she thought things were coming together, was this a sign they were unravelling?

She sighed. She would have to talk to him about it, to get to the bottom of what was bothering him. Of course, it must have been the awful fighting he had seen and been involved in – nobody would be able to forget it and especially not someone like William. Oh gosh, Audrey could hardly stand to think of the violence! What was Charlie going through this very minute? The last letter she’d had from him said he was in Crete, where the newspapers had reported on ‘unparalleled ferocity’ and said that thousands of the British military had been captured. She shivered. It seemed so very far away, she thought, looking at the sepia photographs of Charlie’s relatives who had started up Barton’s bakery hanging on the wall.

Heading into the shop to check the blackout blinds, she felt her eyelids grow heavy. But before she could turn in, she must sit down at the kitchen table and write a list of the orders for the next day. Checking the door was safely locked, she stood still for a moment in the dark shop, silently telling Charlie that she was taking care of the bakery as best she could. Empty now, of course, the shop seemed to echo with the gossip from the customers, their faces as visible to Audrey now, in the darkness, as they were in the day.

Turning from the shop floor to climb the stairs to finish off the paperwork, she yawned when she entered the kitchen, thinking how, mercifully, it had been at least a week since the last air-raid siren and how, in Bournemouth at least, they had escaped bombing raids at night for some weeks, and—